


Light and Dark

by Nayinator



Series: Love and War [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Battle, Cliffhangers, Fluff, Fluffy, Intense, Love and War MLB, Minor Character Death, Miraculous Holders, Raven - Freeform, Sequel, Storms, Visions, War, crazy cliffhangers because I can't write a solid book without them, marinette story arc, miraculous - Freeform, my original character Alderam, possible torture scene, rated teen for possibly dark themes and instense battle, sequel to Love and War MLB
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nayinator/pseuds/Nayinator
Summary: Sequel to Love and War.Two years after the War of the Miraculouses and Gabriel Agreste's death, Alderam returns. Marinette gets visions she's unsure what to do with. Seeking revenge on Gabriel's family is only a plus to what Alderam has in store for himself. The only thing standing in his way? Three Miraculouses, and he knows exactly how to get them.(Plus: I've got a freaking amazing plan for Marinette so it's gonna be awesome)





	1. Chapter 1: March

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Fellow Mirauclousers!!  
> OMG I’VE BEEN DYING TO GET THIS UP HERE. It feels so strange not posting every week, and I know it’s so soon after I’ve finished Love and War, but I reallllyyyyy wanted to get something going and out there.   
> Just a head up: This one will NOT be switching POV’s but the “…” will indicate a time splice.

 

There’s a fine line between what we call war and what we call hope. Hope is something we admire, something we cherish. War is something we detest and avoid. The two can easily get mixed up in the heat of battle when the flame is strong enough to melt the meanings together. When hope suddenly burns to ash and becomes unreachable, whereas war becomes the river of water that’s easy to see and even easier to touch.

Alderam came back two years after the War of the Miraculouses. Marinette had woken up in the early hours of the morning with blue eyes wide and a dark shadow over her face.

I sat up after her, immediately attuned to her movements. She looked at me and I swore it almost looked as though she were once again on the brink of death, and although she wasn’t, it almost would’ve been better if she were.

“A-A-Adrien…”

Reaching over for her hand in the dark of the room, I squeezed it tightly to let her know I was there. A habit that I’ve had since forever, but one that had increased ten-fold after the War of the Miraculouses.

“Marinette, you haven’t stuttered like that around me since we were teenagers,” I grumbled sleepily, half-teasing to lighten her mood.

Her fist found my arm in the dark swiftly but before I could even get a word of complaint out, Marinette breathed out a single word, “ _Alderam_.”

Reaching beside me I clicked on our little lamp and looked at the time on the digital clock that rested on the bedside table. The bright red light indicated that it was 9:00 am in the morning, yet outside our windows, it was pitch black as though it were still nighttime.

Returning my attention to Marinette, I could see that she still had that look, that we-are-going-to-die look. I grabbed her shoulder and asked quickly, “What do you mean _Alderam?_ Is he back? How do you know?”

Long ago I had learned to trust Marinette’s instincts, especially when it came to bad guys. She was right about my father, and the War of the Miraculouses, it took me so long to trust her that way that now, anything she said I believed to be true.

Marinette swallowed thickly and ran her hand through her thick, dark hair, which now fell well past her shoulders, “Do you remember, after the War and Gabriel’s funeral how I had that nightmare?”

I did remember. It was one of the worst nights we had had after the War. But, after that dream, things went back to normal so easily it would’ve been easy to forget about that dream. Nevertheless, I remembered. We remembered.

I nodded my head slowly and she continued hoarsely, “It was about him. It was more like a vision than a dream though, I saw-I… I saw…”

“What did you see, bugaboo?” I rubbed the spot between Marinette’s shoulder blades gently. Her hand dropped to her lap making her hair fall over her face, shadowing her features darkly in the limited lighting. With her shoulders hunched and her mouth parted she answered in words that made my blood freeze.

“I think,” Marinette started darkly, “I saw Alderam murder someone…”

Sucking in a breath I clasped my hand, the one that usually had the Chat Noir ring on it, and immediately felt unguarded, unprotected. That feeling hadn’t occurred to me once since giving the ring up for its own safety, but now, it was as if the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I wasn’t prepared, and I had no means to protect my family if a threat were immediate. Suddenly, getting the ring, getting Marinette’s earrings, those were top priority to me now.

However, I shoved the instinct down. We didn’t have enough information, and it would be stupid of us to pull our Miraculouses out of safety on a dream that may or may not be true.

Instead, I looked at Marinette, who was now looking at me with tears in her eyes, and I asked, “Did you see who he killed?”

Silence.

A silence strong enough to stiffen my bones and chill my skin, creating goosebumps over the surface of my bare arms.

Marinette dropped another tear from her left eye and opened her mouth to finally respond only, a younger voice came out, the small voice of two-year-old Hugo who stood in the now open doorway, flooding our room with light.

“Dada, cup,” Hugo whined, waddling over to my side of the bed. Worriedly, I glanced at Marinette, but she used our blanket to wipe away her tears and slap on her motherly smile.

With a small giggle she said, “Hugo, you’re getting so smart.”

I leaned over the side of our bed and picked up Hugo from the ground, placing him on my lap in one swift motion.

Hugo’s hair had gotten long again, long enough to tickle his nose in the front, and brush the nape of his neck in the back. But his brilliant blue eyes and splattering of freckled over his nose still managed to stand out behind his black mop of hair. The older he got, the more we started to see the features he had that he got from me. Like his nose, and his chin. They were more like me than Marinette, which made me proud, to say the least.

Hugo tapped my chest with his fist and once again said, “Cup!” with the sign for “please” in sign language followed soon after.

Laughing, I mussed up his hair and said, “Yes Hugo, I’ll get you a cup. D’ya want juice or milk?”

“Juisssse,” Hugo tried, losing interest in me and crawling over onto Marinette’s lap. Marinette helped pull him over and gave him a small “boop” on the nose.

Getting out of bed, I walked over to the door and slid my hand over the door handle, just before I left I heard Marinette say, “Do you want to go stay at Grandma and Grandpas for a bit, Hugo?”

    And I got Hugo’s juice, in his favorite green sippy cup.

    And I got a sudden empty feeling inside, almost like, this would be the last time, for a long time, that we would get to spend the day as a family.

    Because when one war ends, another one begins. One with a whole new set of problems, a whole new set of dangers, and a whole new set of scars.

    And briefly, I wondered, what kind of scars would we receive with Alderam?

One like the distorted circle in Marinette’s side?

Or one that perhaps, we wouldn’t be able to see on the outside?

…

We decided to spend one last week with each other as a family before we sent Hugo off to Sabine and Tom’s. Alya and Nino joined us too with their set of newborn twins, Mia and Eli. After the war Alya, Nino, Marinette and I decided that we should sell the house we lived in and buy a bigger house together with the four of us and Hugo. Lucky we did, because the twins were a surprise that none of us saw coming, and the new five-bedroom house fit perfectly for our ever-growing family.

In fact, after the twins came along Marinette and I had talked about the possibility of having another child, but, with her dreams and the creepily ascending storm clouds outside, I didn’t think another kid was going to happen anytime soon.

Alya came out of the kitchen with two giant plates full of food and set them down on the coffee table neatly, Nino came out behind her with the twins asleep in each arm, placing them one after the other into the playpen we had set up in the living room. I got off the couch and entered the kitchen to grab paper plates and a stack of red solo cups for drinks, then returned to the living room and set them out neatly around the food plates.

Alya started to head back towards the kitchen to grab the giant 2-liter soda bottles and on her way back I called out, “Alya, could you grab the napkins while you’re in there too?”

“Sure,” she replied.

Nino plopped down on the couch with a short sigh. The bags under his eyes were worse than mine and Marinette’s after Hugo was born. The twins were a handful and they weren’t even mobile yet.

Taking a seat next to Nino I looked at the sleeping twins, then at him.

“I don’t know how you and Marinette did it,” Nino started. “I mean, gosh I never knew kids were so much work.”

I laughed gently and leaned forward to grab a sandwich off one of the dinner platters, “We had a _lot_ of help. Besides, Hugo is just one baby, Mia and Eli are two. You were set up for double trouble right from the beginning my friend.” Taking a large bite of the sandwich, I sat back into the couch and turned on the television to start flipping through movies.

Alya came back out from the kitchen with soda and napkins, and shortly after, Marinette came downstairs from giving Hugo a bath and took a seat next to me. After finishing my sandwich and placing the remote on the couch, Mari handed Hugo over to me, indicating that it was my turn to put him to sleep.

Hugo was in his ladybug spotted onesie pajama’s and wrapped up in a soft yellow blanket. He was holding a sippy cup of warm milk and sleep was evitable in his eyes. Putting him to sleep, especially with a movie night, would be a piece of cake.

“How was his bath?” I asked Marinette.

Mari smiled at me as I laid Hugo into the crook of my arm and snuggled him to my chest, “It was good. He had fun playing with some of the new toys mom and dad got him.”

Hugo beamed up at me, baby teeth and all. I flicked his hair out of his face and returned the smile gently.

“Good. He’s getting so big already, it seems like he was born just yesterday.”

Marinette leaned over my shoulder, scooting closer to my side to get a better look at Hugo. My heart raced from the proximity. Even after all these years.

“Yeah,” she replied with a fond expression, “I wish things would stay settled down, so we could have another one.”

Nino interrupted us with a quick, “Are you two _insane_?! Watch the twins for a weekend and you’ll probably change your minds.”

Alya laughed, taking a seat sideways and laying her legs over Nino’s lap, “Come on babe, you know you love them. I mean, just look at them,” Silence while Nino glanced at the playpen.

His expression softened, and a small grin spread over his cheeks, “Yeah, I love them.”

Alya kissed Nino’s cheek and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch to wrap herself in. When Nino could finally get himself to look away from the twins, I slid the remote control into his hand and he clicked on a family movie for us to watch, The Incredibles 2.

“Man, this one’s supposed to be amazing,” I commented.

“We waited far too long for this sequel.” Nino agreed.

“You two are nerds,” Marinette and Alya said in unison.

Finishing off my sandwich I countered, “But you love us anyway.”

Marinette hummed for a moment, a teasing smile on her lips as she pretended to “think about it”, then she swooped in and gave me a quick, warm kiss on the lips.

“Nerds,” Alya mumbled under her breath.

We all laughed gleefully.

…

Nights like that followed almost all week. Nights where we played board games while the kids slept, or days where we went to the park for a lunch picnic while Hugo played on the jungle gym and the twins hung out in their stroller, or days where we just sat together and enjoyed the little things. The things like reading a book to the kids, or coloring, or waking up in the dead of the night to help Nino and Alya with the twins.

I wish that week could have lasted longer, but everything had to come to an end. Especially as the dark storm cloud that seemed to have made its home over Paris was getting darker and deadlier, brewing thunder and lightning almost every night at the same time. 3 am. And 3 am on the last night was exactly when Marinette had woken up from yet another bad dream, this one not nearly as bad as the last, but still, it acted as almost a warning.

When Marinette recovered enough to speak about it, she told me it was about the Ladybug earrings. She had what she decided, “was more like a vision than a dream” about the earrings being swept away by a set of dark raven wings made of smoke. After waking Nino and Alya to discuss the dream, we had figured that the Alderam must have the earrings. The wings in Marinette’s dream resembled that of a Ravens, which is what we had nicknamed Alderam before we knew who he really was. And the fact that he could have the earrings, wasn’t a good sign.

“We need to go see Master Fu,” Marinette demanded. Her face had gone sheet pale and her skin had started to coat itself with sweat.

Touching her shoulder gently I asked, “What do you mean?”

“He has the earrings, Adrien. We _have_ to go see him. _Now._ ” Marinette got up and started sliding a black coat over her shoulders.

“Hold up girl,” Alya said. “We don’t know if it’s safe.”

“It’s safe,” Marinette said immediately, looking at the ground. “I think… But we have to go.” Her gaze snapped back up to me. “ _Please_ , Adrien, just trust me.”

Alya and Nino looked at me for an answer, but my mind was drawing a blank.

“Marinette, I think we should wait until we’re sure this wasn’t just some horrible dream-”

“And the only way to do that is to go see Master Fu.” Marinette threw on a pair of shoes and walked over to me, gripping my shoulder tightly. “Listen, that dream I had before the storm clouds hit? Do you want to know who I saw Alderam murder?”

I gulped, unsure whether my answer was actually relevant at this point.

It wasn’t.

“ _Master Fu_. I saw him murder Master Fu. Now, if Alderam has the earrings, that means that Master Fu could be…” she hesitated a moment, dropping her arm. “Dead. And I want to make sure that isn’t the case.”

Alya walked over to Marinette and put a hand on her shoulder, “Okay. I’m with you.”

Tucking Marinette’s loose hair behind her hair I agreed saying, “Me too, but first, the kids. Let’s pack Hugo’s’ bag and let Sabine and Tom know were coming. Then, drop the twins off with their grandparents. Okay?”

Marinette nodded slowly, relaxing just slightly. “Okay.”

Nino and Alya headed downstairs to their part of the house and started to get the twins together to leave. I sat Marinette down with a glass of water and ran upstairs to Hugo’s room to pack his bag.

I took out the largest suitcase I could find and slowly opened it up, trying to be careful not to make too much noise and wake Hugo. Sabine and Tom already knew that something like this would happen, but they didn’t need a lull in Hugo’s sleep schedule to add stress to the situation.

Packing the suitcase was fast and easy. Sabine and Tom had already transformed Marinette’s old room into a fun nursery for Hugo a long time ago, for when he slept over or came over to visit. It was full of toys and blankets, even some clothes.

Which meant, that all I really needed to pack, was extra clothes, pacifiers, bottles and spoons, food, and diapers. Then, he would be set.

A tinge of sadness touched my heart as I threw the last of Hugo’s things into his bag, zipping it shut. Who knew how long Hugo would have to stay with his grandparents, and who knew how long it would be until we saw him in person again.

Sure, there were phones and pictures, but looking at your own child with your own two eyes was much more precious than over a screen.

I walked over to Hugo’s toddler bed and carefully picked him up, trying my hardest not to move him too much and wake him.

We tediously descended the stairs together where Marinette still sat with her glass of water.

“Mari,” I whispered. “Run upstairs and grab his suitcase. We’ll meet you in the car.”

Marinette nodded and disappeared, I grabbed the car keys and stepped outside into the cold air, ignoring the thunder rumbling in the distance from the storm.

Hugo remained still until I slid him into his car seat. He stirred, rubbing his eyes with the back of his fist roughly.

“Shhh,” I whispered gently, tugging his blanket around him, “Shh, it’s okay Hugo. Go back to sleep, son.”

Luckily, Hugo immediately settled back down and remained cozy and asleep in his car seat. I sighed a breath of relief.

Marinette came out with the suitcase and put it into the trunk of the car before jumping into the passenger seat.

Alya and Nino stumbled out the front door behind her, juggling suitcases and babies around until they got everything into their car beside us. I waited until they pulled out of the driveway first before leaving, then turned the wheel quickly and stepped on the gas, leaving our home behind.

I didn’t watch the large building get smaller in the distance through the rearview mirror.

I didn’t watch the mailbox out front with all our handprints on it in different colors get swallowed by the dark storm cloud that resided over Paris.

And finally, I didn’t turn back, because if I did, I would never leave again.

Once we were out of the driveway, we were gone. All of us. And coming home would become something of a dream in the back of our minds.

Something that hope would shine on and war would trample.

Or, maybe something that war would make us miss, and hope would make us envy.

These things do get mixed in the ashes after all.

 


	2. Chapter 2: April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Fellow Miraculousers!!!  
> Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for taking so long to post this chapter. I posted the first chapter right before I left for a trip, thinking I would have time to write while on my trip, which obviously didn’t happen…  
> But here I am, and here is chapter two to Light and Dark. Thank you all soo much for waiting and I hope you enjoy!!!  
> P.S. I might go back and edit this chapter a bit more later

**Chapter Two: April**

Sabine and Tom were waiting for us outside the door of the bakery in the raging wind the dark storm clouds above had started to create. They wore sad smiles upon their faces and took Hugo graciously in their arms.

Once again, Marinette and I were saying goodbye. Only this time, there were no tears, just a strong straight face of determination. If I was being honest, I wasn’t sure that we needed to leave Hugo this early in the War, especially since I wasn’t even sure there was a War to be worrying over yet, but Marinette swore up and down that something big was going down, and that the sooner our family was safe, the sooner we could fight.

We peeled out of the bakery’s drive way and headed for Master Fu’s place. Next to me in the car, Marinette chewed on her nails and fixated her attention on her hair, or her clothes, or our packed bags in the back seat, almost anything she could do in a car to keep herself busy and her mind off Master Fu.

“You okay?” I asked her carefully.

“Fine. Do you remember where I put my phone, babe?”

“Umm…” I thought for a moment, turning the wheel of the car to match the turn. “Try the backpack on the floor.”

Marinette unzipped a few pockets and finally made an “aha!” sound as she pulled her phone out from the depths of the bag.

“I’m going to call Alya really quick, see where they’re at”

“Sounds good,” I stayed silent while the phone rang in her hand. After the third ring Alya answered.

“Hey Alya, did you get the twins dropped off?”

An indistinct mumbling on the other end. Quickly, I switched the blinker on and changed lanes, feeling the wind tugging the car fiercely. I bit my lip nervously and looked up at the sky, it was only noon, but the sky was so dark that even the high beams on the car could barely cut through the darkness.

“Great, sounds great. I’ll send you the address to Master Fu’s and Adrien and I will meet you guys there. We might need to consider some back-up, could you guys stop by the Weapons Lock-up?”

The Weapons Lock-up. After the War of the Miraculouses ended, Marinette and I went back to our normal lives. Sort of. See, without our Miraculouses, we were left defenseless, and with the warning from Gabriel about Alderam, Marinette and I couldn’t deal with the fact that if we were attacked, we would be unprepared without our Miraculouses.

So, three times a week, we rallied our old classmates for fitness training, military tactic classes, and weapons making. Not only that, but I quit the modeling business, signing Gabriel’s company over to Marinette to take care of, and I started teaching fencing for all ages, including intensive private classes for the Ex-Miraculous Holders.

All the weapons we made and trained with were locked up underground beneath the Eiffel Tower. It had grown tremendously as everyone gained skills in building their own, customized weapons. Some of them were almost just like their Miraculous counterpart’s weapons, but if it made our teammates comfortable when it came to be fighting, then it was good enough for me.

Alya must have agreed with retrieving some weapons because Marinette said, “Grab the colorful vials on the back-left shelf too, the one’s for the kwamii’s. If my earrings are still safe, I’m going to want to use them, and the Chat Noir ring. We never know what are kwamii’s might need to be capable of against Alderam.”

She hung up the phone and let out a tense sigh into the back of her hand. Reaching over, I placed my hand on her knee and gave it a small, comforting squeeze.

“Hey, Mari…” I trailed off. Marinette put her small hand on top of my own and laced her fingers through mine gently.

“What is it, Adrien?”

The car started to slip out from underneath me, so I let go of Marinette’s hand and forcefully straightened the wheel. The effort was enough to make my muscles ache.

Once I had the car back to where it needed to be, I leaned back in my seat, keeping both hands on the wheel, and glanced over at Marinette.

She was gripping the door handle of the car but was otherwise okay. I continued, “These dreams you have… you keep describing them as visions, right?”

“Yes,”

“Do they come every night?”

Marinette shook her head, “No. Turn here, it’s a short cut.”

I took the turn, breathing out a sigh of relief at Marinette’s words.

“Good, and uh, what do you think is causing them? Because if we’re preparing to go to war on a vision, I think we should know why they’re happening. Especially with something so important, I mean, we can’t put Paris into a state of panic over a dream.”

“I know, I know…” Marinette sighed. “It’s… it’s kind of like with Gabriel. Master Fu said that whoever had the book must be Hawkmoth, but that’s just an assumption, right? Tikki had stolen the book from you, so Master Fu was telling me that you had to be Hawkmoth and that I shouldn’t trust you. But, even putting my crush on you aside, I knew that couldn’t be right. I just… knew. Like an instinct I guess. These visions are kind of like that. An instinct, and I saw Master Fu get killed, so I want to know if it’s true. If it is, I think we should be as prepared as we can be. Better safe than sorry after all.”

Another giant gust of wind slammed into the side of the vehicle and sent us spinning out of control. Marinette let out a sharp scream and I gritted my teeth together, desperately trying to get the car to straighten out. My heart raced in my chest, threatening to jump out and run away and hide, but for Marinette’s sake I gripped the wheel tighter and steeled my nerves.

Suddenly, Marinette reached out and gripped my arm tightly, looking at me dead on. All the color left her face and her blue eyes widened in fear.

“Adrien, look.” She whispered, pointing to a spot out the windshield.

The car came to a complete stop crooked in the middle of the deserted road, crossing the two yellow lines at an angle that faced us back to where we were coming from. Every single light on the street blew out as though a giant were blowing out his birthday candles, making it nearly impossible to see anything at first. But then one by one, each light on the street turned back on, and as the trail of lights crept closer and closer to the scene ahead of us, the more I wanted to call upon the Chat Noir ring.

In the sky, the giant storm clouds swirled together angrily, completely cutting Paris off from the rest of the world.

However, the biggest red flag wasn’t that Paris was cut-off, or that Marinette and I sat on the border between Paris and Master Fu’s, but it was that the clouds weren’t _normal._ They were in the shape of a set of raven’s wings, giant, and almost smoky looking in the sky, curling it’s feathers around the city as though it were creating a cocoon.

I looked at Marinette, who was giving me a look of determination now, instead of fear.

“What is that?” I inquired fearfully as silence fell around us.

Marinette looked at the strange clouds, then behind us at the road towards Master Fu’s, and when she returned her gaze to me she finally replied, “I don’t know, Adrien, but we _have_ to keep going. We’re running short on time-”

Marinette was cut off by a silver jeep rolling up next to us on the road, Alya and Nino. A look of relief washed over Marinette’s face and she jumped out of the car to greet our friends.

“Are you guys okay?” Marinette called out, reaching the car with heavy breaths.

Alya climbed out of the jeep and slammed the door shut before giving Marinette a brief hug.

I got out of the vehicle too, just in time to hear Alya say, “We barely made it out. The storm cloud, it’s almost like a prison cage.”

My heart started pounding in my chest, “Prison cage?” I questioned. “What do you mean?”

Alya turned to me tensely, “On the inside, it’s almost like there’s no way out. Once you hit the outskirts of town the clouds become thicker and heavier, you can’t tell which way is right or which was is left. I-I’m not sure what’s going on anymore…” Alya’s voice seemed to falter at her last words, she probably had less information than I did about what was going on, which was absolutely terrifying.

The only person who had the answers thus far, was Marinette. But, even she couldn’t hold a straight idea of what was going to happen, or what already was happening.

Marinette glimpsed through the window in the back of the jeep and furrowed her brows, “No weapons?”

“Couldn’t make it in time.” Alya answered with a shake of her head.

“Okay. We need to keep going.” Marinette turned around and hopped into the driver’s seat of our car.

I stole a glance at Alya. She gave me a look, one of concern. Her bright hazel eyes now seemed dark and fearful. None of us looked the same after the War of the Miraculouses of course, we had all changed. But this time, the war hadn’t even started, and we were all changing. Shifting into something that was hard for us to understand.

“Okay, let’s go then.” Alya whispered, disappearing behind her car door.

Circling around our vehicle, I placed my hand on the cold handle of the door. The wind blew around me fiercely, whipping my zip-up hoodie around crazily. One last time, I looked up into the sky at the dark wings, the Raven’s Wings, took a deep breath, and got into the car.

Marinette turned the wheel, stepped on the gas, and we were off.

We arrived at Master Fu’s within minutes, especially with Marinette’s driving. Marinette instructed Alya and Nino to stay put, in case we needed back up, and her and I slid open the front door silently.

The house was still and dark. Each slow, sturdy step we took creaked the floorboards monstrously, and the sounds of our breathing seemed to amplify tenfold in the echoes of the building. Between the storm outside, and the lack of lighting in Fu’s house, the darkness was so intense that no matter how many times I blinked to adjust to the darkness, it just didn’t cut it.

_Chat Noir would’ve been able to see through this thick blackness easily._ I couldn’t help but think to myself.

Marinette gripped my arm tightly and tugged me towards the right. I followed carefully, hoping my other senses would keep me from running into walls or objects.

Suddenly, we came to a door with light flooding out from its perimeter. The light illuminated the hallway enough that I could see Marinette’s face again. Pale, sheen with sweat, blue eyes full of worry. All things I need to see, things that grounded me.

“Do you smell that?” She breathed out.

Stopping myself, a looked at the door and inhaled deeply. The faint smell of blood trickled its way into my nose.

Gulping I answered, “Yeah, I hate to say it, but it smells like…” I took a deep breath, “It smells like the start of a war.”

Reaching out, I turned the bronzed doorknob of the door, and shoved it open.

Instantly, every single one of my hairs stood on end and my senses went on high alert.

The smell hit me first, like a wave of death hitting you smack dab in the middle of the face, engulfing you like quicksand. Filling your nose, your ears, your mouth, your eyes, and every single pore in your body within seconds.

The room smelled strongly of blood and rotting skin, circulating and sitting in a closed area for too long.

Then, the body. It was… mutilated to the point where you almost couldn’t recognize who it was.

Marinette let out a horrified scream and dropped to her knees. I bent down and reached out to her, comforting her. With shaking hands, she covered her eyes and bawled. Heart wrenching sobs wrecked her body as she rocked back and forth on the cold hard ground next to his dried-up blood.

“I hoped it wasn’t true…” Marinette whimpered.

Her words caught me off guard. I stopped rubbing her back and studied her tear-soaked face, “What did you say?”

Trembling, Marinette repeated herself, “I hoped it wasn’t true… T-The visions… I _saw everything._ ”

_She saw everything. The visions._ Horror washed over me, and I looked about the room. Master Fu was nearly in pieces around the room with a gaping hole in his torso that had an appearance of _scorched_ black ink along the edges of the wound. Swallowing down my fear, and possibly my vomit, I moved my focus to his face. Dried blood stuck to his lips and chin, his eyes were glossed over, looking just past us in the distance.

Could Marinette have _seen_ Master Fu’s death? Like really seen it? The magic, the blood, the violence… is this why she woke up every night screaming for the past week?

“Oh, Mari…” My voice cracked with emotion, unsure of how to continue.

Marinette slowly found the strength to stand again, using the nightstand next to her to support her weight while I stood frozen in place. The intense lighting in this room made her tears reflect and shine unnecessarily brightly, and her blue eyes, Marinette’s brilliantly happy blue eyes were shattered to pieces, leaving a hallow sadness where the happiness had once lain.

She brushed her black hair back with her fingers and looked at me carefully, “Adrien,” she sniffled, “if what I saw about today is true, he died _one week ago._ And if this vision was true… then, Adrien, this war is going to be _so much bigger_ than our last.”

Without looking at her, I said, “I know.”

“His death isn’t the only thing I saw… The earrings are gone too. Alderam took them.” Marinette’s voice was slowly fading in and out, strong one moment, weak the next.

“What do we do?”

“Collect his research, call the police to… to take care of his body… we need to leave and we need protect our city.”

Grabbing the backpack from off my back I replied, “Let’s hurry then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, soooo there was just no way I was going to write this book without making it super dark and twisted. Love and War was dark, but not as dark as I had wanted to go, and since you guys are asking for a sequel the best way to make it good is to make it darker than the last one, so I hope you guys are good with that.  
> Also, I have plans for Marinette that are going to be amazingggg (hopefully) and I hope you guys enjoy the sequel.  
> I’ll try to update this one once a week like with Love and War, but no promises of course :D  
> The outline for this story isn’t completely done, I’m just too excited to start getting chapters out there to wait any longer. This just means that I might make changes to early chapters the further I go on, but I will try to let you guys know if I do :) Here’s to me wingin’ it. (Although, if I’m being honest, I winged Love and War as it was meant to be a one-shot that ended after chapter 3, so maybe wingin’ this one will work too).  
> Love you guys!! Hope you enjoy the sequel as much as you enjoyed Love and War!!  
> Also: Title is a work in progress. Maybe we should vote? Light and Dark or Serenity and Battle. Let’s see which one wins :))


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